Michael Gerber Quotes

CONFUSION 6: WHO TO CALL A CUSTOMER At this stage, it’s important to ask some questions: Which types of Customers would you most like to do business with? Where do you see your real market opportunities? Who would you like to work with, provide service for, and position your business for? A Tactile Customer for whom people is most important? A Neutral Customer for whom the mechanics of how you do business is most important? An Experimental Customer for whom cutting-edge innovation is important? A Traditional Customer for whom low cost and certainty of delivery are absolutely essential? In short, it’s all up to you. No mystery. No magic. Just a systematic process for shaping your business’s future. But you must have the passion to pursue the process. And you must be absolutely clear about every aspect of it. Until you know your Customers as well as you know yourself. Until all your complaints about Customers are a thing of the past. Until you accept the undeniable fact that Customer Acquisition and Customer Satisfaction are more science than art. But unless you’re willing to grow your business, you better not follow any of the above recommendations. Because it will definitely grow.

Hi, have you been in here before?” The customer will respond with either a “yes” or a “no.” In either case, you are then free to pursue the conversation.

Tolerance for failure is a very specific part of the excellent company culture — and that lesson comes directly from the top. Champions have to make lots of tries and consequently suffer some failures or the organization won’t learn. Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. In Search of Excellence

Organize around business functions, not people. Build systems within each business function. Let systems run the business and people run the systems. People come and go, but the systems remain constant.

if you understand the technical work of a business, you understand a business that does that technical work.

It is — first, last, and always — about how you act.

O Empreendedor é a nossa personalidade criativa — sempre a dar o seu melhor quando está a lidar com o desconhecido, tocando o futuro e transformando possibilidades em probabilidades, aplicando o seu engenho na transformação do caos em harmonia.

If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business — you have a job.

how successfully you can satisfy the emotional or perceived needs lurking there (your customers’ psychographics).

All organizations are hierarchical. At each level people serve under those above them. An organization is therefore a structured institution. If it is not structured, it is a mob. Mobs do not get things done, they destroy things.

Quality is just a word, and an empty word at that, if it doesn’t include harmony, balance, passion, intention, attention. “Continuous improvement for its own sake is a waste of time. “Life is what a business is about, and life is what this work is about. Coming to grips with oneself, in the face of an incredibly complex world that can teach us if we’re open to learn.

I believe that our business can provide us with a mirror to see ourselves as we are, to see what we truly know and what we don’t know, to see ourselves honestly, directly, and immediately.

the typical small business owner is only 10 percent Entrepreneur, 20 percent Manager, and 70 percent Technician.

From the very outset, IBM was fashioned after the template of my vision. And each and every day we attempted to model the company after that template. At the end of each day, we asked ourselves how well we did, discovered the disparity between where we were and where we had committed ourselves to be, and, at the start of the following day, set out to make up for the difference. Every day at IBM was a day devoted to business development, not doing business. We didn’t do business at IBM, we built one

Color. El color es lo primero que ve la gente y, por lo tanto, es un elemento crucial de la matriz visual. ¿Qué colores transmitirán mejor el objetivo de la empresa? ¿La empresa es divertida? ¿Es seria? ¿Es dinámica? ¿Es formal? ¿Quiere llegar al corazón de las personas, a sus mentes, o a los dos? Si digo «divertida», ¿le vienen unos colores concretos a la mente? Si digo «seria», ¿ve los colores oscuros que evoca la palabra? Si digo «dinámica», ¿puede visualizar qué colores aparecen? ¿Puede oír el sonido de esos colores?